Saturday, September 16, 2017

REVIEW 525: SIMRAN

Release date:

September 15, 2017

Director:

Hansal Mehta

Cast:

Language:

Kangana
Ranaut, Sohum Shah, Rupinder Nagra

Hindi

Not every intriguing criminal has
a grandly tragic back story. Sometimes the ordinariness from which the
epic, the brutal or the bizarre emerge is fascinating in itself. Simran, director Hansal Mehta tells me,
is inspired by a spate of somewhat run-of-the-mill real-life bank robberies in
the US in recent years, including the most prominent of the lot: the drama
surrounding the woman who came to be known as America’s Bombshell Bandit, a
young, glamorous Punjabi Sikh nurse called Sandeep Kaur who robbed a string of
banks over a five-week period in the summer of 2014, before being arrested by
the police following a high-speed highway car chase.

Bank
robbers are becoming an extinct species. The rise of electronic payments is
creating a cashless society, and since 2003, bank robberies have fallen 47%.
The crime is also an overwhelmingly male activity. According to the latest FBI
figures, just 8% of America’s 4,347 bank robberies last year were committed by
a woman. “Traditionally women have been involved in bank robberies only as
getaway drivers, or accomplices to male robbers,” says Dr Richard Schmitt, a US
criminal psychologist who has evaluated more than 50 bank robbers. Schmitt says
that a robber who is an educated professional female, and a Sikh, is, “a highly
unusual case… in the history of the United States you will not find another bank
robber with this profile.”

(Possible spoilers ahead if you
skipped Simran’s trailer and all its
promotions)

In the film, we get Praful
Patel (played by Kangana Ranaut), a 30-year-old divorcee of Gujarati origin who
is working in the housekeeping services department of an Atlanta hotel. Praful
lives with her conservative middle-class parents, a grouchy father who runs a
small business and her mother who is a housewife. She is a blithe spirit who
does not want to be tied down by tradition and meaningless customs, and she’s
feeling suffocated by their narrow vision for her life when we first meet her.
Praful is hardworking, and is gradually saving the money needed to buy a house
in which she hopes to live unencumbered by Dad’s nagging and the pressure they
both place on her to get married (to be as free as the breeze she draws a friend’s
attention to – not constrained by buildings, not held down by roads).

A visit to Las Vegas with a
cousin changes her life forever. She wins some money at a casino and gets
hooked. Before she knows what hit her though, she is on a losing streak and
then deeply in debt.

The false hope that is born of
beginner’s luck at a gambling table has destroyed many lives. In Praful’s case,
a series of little scares, disappointments, frustrations and heartbreaks at
home, at work and in her gambler avatar, turns this seemingly ordinary person
into a thug.

(Spoiler alert ends)

What I enjoyed most about this
film is that it has no pretensions to largeness, nor does it make any effort to
lionise or romanticise Praful or her life. To do so would have been easy because
it is a natural human reaction to draw consolation from discovering that a
criminal emerged from misery. The thing about Praful is that she does not look
like the heroine of a crime saga. She is not someone else who you expect to hear of only in the news media or
fiction. She is Everywoman. She could well be you or me gone wrong.

This is not to suggest that she
has it easy – she does not. Yet it is fair to say that she has not suffered any
great pain, poverty, affliction or persecution. Her struggles too could well be
yours or mine.

It is interesting then to watch
how easily and quickly she turns to crime, beginning with the most naturally
written, directed and enacted scene you can imagine of an open window tempting
a saint and a tigress getting addicted once she tastes easily available blood –
excuse me for the mixed metaphors but you will get what I mean when you watch
the film.

Director Hansal Mehta must be
lauded for his conviction, his confidence in the written material at hand and
the clarity he has about how he wishes to tell Praful’s tale – steering clear
of seamy, overtly grim territory and driving home the weirdness of it all. The
narrative has an easy flow to it, the pace is just right, the humour is
unrelenting yet at no point are Praful’s actions normalised. The result is that
even while giggling at her eccentricities it is hard to escape the realisation
that this is just a regular could-have-been-my-next-door-neighbour kind of
woman.

Without an iota of preachiness, Simran also delivers a range of insights
into NRI culture, workplace politics, the things that prejudice has done to
post-9/11 America and human nature across races. In its choice of title it also
throws in a cheeky interpretation of a (highly socially regressive) Hindi film
classic.

Even the songs are fitted well
into the proceedings, except for the number at a wedding function, Jaddo nachche baby, which does not suit
the tone of the rest of the film. Still, it is fun enough to be excused. The
closing song with the end credits is a hoot, and a good example of how
effective that now-typical Bollywood narrative device can be when well used.

The heartbeat of this project is
Ranaut, and she justifies every single frame composed around her. She is
extremely funny, but does not at any point allow Praful to be reduced to a
comical creature, thus retaining the underlying pathos of her story. The only
place where she falters – and this is as much a fault of the direction as her
acting – is in a rather silly scene that has her peeping into the window of a
bank, where she looks a bit like a cartoon character. The one place where Simran itself falters is in the
motivation behind the protagonist’s climactic decision on that highway – it is
amusing, but it is not credible. Both
are inexplicably farcical breaks in a film
that otherwise succeeds in walking a fine line with its air
and tenor.

Though the writing is largely
focused on Praful, the screenplay does throw up some interesting satellite
characters, most especially a young man called Sameer played by the incredibly charismatic
Sohum Shah from Ship of Theseus. The
rest of the supporting roles are all filled out by talented actors. It is such
a relief to see a Hindi film set in a Western country that is not packed with
terrible foreign extras – each actor here has been chosen with care.

Simran has come to theatres following
an ugly controversy over its writing credits. The final rolls read: story,
screenplay and dialogues – Apurva Asrani, additional story and dialogues –
Kangana Ranaut. The truth about what went on behind the scenes may never be
fully revealed, but what has emerged now that the curtains have been drawn
aside is a compact, sweet, unconventional entertainer.

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About Me

Anna MM Vetticad is an award-winning journalist, journalism teacher and author of the critically acclaimed bestseller The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic, an overview of the Hindi film industry presented through an account of a year in which she watched every single Bollywood film released in India’s National Capital Region. A journalist since 1994, she has worked with India Today, The Indian Express and Headlines Today. At HT she hosted her own interview show Star Trek which drew all India’s eminent entertainment personalities. While Anna has spent most of her career as a behind-the-scenes editorial person, she has also reported on most major Indian entertainment and lifestyle events and several international ones including Cannes and the Oscars, in addition to being the film critic for Headlines Today. She is currently reporting and writing for multiple publications on cinema and social issues with a focus on gender concerns. The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic is available on amazon.com, ebay.in, flipkart.com, ombooksinternational.com, ombooks.com, infibeam.com, homeshop18.com and dialabook.in among other websites, and in stores across India. Twitter: @annavetticad